The Pogues
The Mahones are celebrating their 35th year being a terrific Irish Punk band here in Toronto and Kingston (Where they originated from), and they celebrated this milestone in Kensington Market at a place called Lola. One of the main reasons this band and most Irish Punk bands exist is because of the Pogues. The Mahones have taken their love of the Pogues and are paying tribute to them with their brand new release. I will review this very soon.
It is an acoustic take of the Mahones favourite songs. I will add a link at the bottom of the page so you can check it out for yourself.
An Acoustic show- Side 1
This night of acoustic punk music was brought to you by, Steve Rutnya, Rowan Picard and of course, Finny McNicoll.
Finny came on stage in a great mood, I think he is very excited about the release of his brand new album. It is an acoustic love letter to the Pogues. He took these classic songs and broke them down to a gentler state of being. He let us know that the first half of this show will be the new release in its entirety. The first song set the pace for the rest of the evening. The winner of that first spot belongs to the song, “If I should fall from grace”.
Lola was looking a little crowded as the first set was underway. People continued to walk in and enjoyed songs like, “The Old Main Drag” and the classic, “Dirty Old Town”, which BTW was the first song the Mahones ever played: A little punk trivia for you.
As we ventured deeper into the Pogues delicious catalog, you could hear some of the audience singing along with their favourite songs, like “Streams of Whiskey” and “Wild Rover”.
By the end of the first set, I was wondering if they were going to finish off with, “A Fairytale of New York”. This is one of those songs everybody knows and loves to sing. I believe for most Pogue fans they may turn their nose up to this one only because everyone knows this song and doesn’t know any other Pogues song. Sharing a room with a bunch of fair-weather fans only there for one song may set off true Pogues fans that are there for every song. Tonight, it didn’t matter, if people came to hear that one song, they may be turned on to all the other songs. I believe that is the purpose of why the Mahones put this new album together.
BTW, yes they did finish off with that song.
An Acoustic Show- Side 2
I enjoyed walking into this show and seeing the room fill with those plastic votive candles, it added a sense of class to the room. I overheard they broke the budget and spent $20 on 48 candles to make this room warm and inviting.
The second set was a collection of the best Mahones songs in their large catalog. They started with-“A great night in the Lash”, followed by the girl with the Galway eyes, that song was dedicated to music lover Charles P Whaley who was sitting next to me and is dedicated to posting his live experiences for Blast Toronto on our Facebook page.
Finny also dedicated a song for the LGTB Community with his song- “Stars (Oscar Wilde)”. This got the people in the room getting loud and really ramping up this fun celebration.
I still love his story about his Father asking him what he accomplished when lived in London for 5 years. Well, he did write a song called, “London”. Some songs take time to fully mature over a long period of time.
He also became friends with Shane McGowan over time and once stayed up all night and drank with him until 11 am in the morning. Maybe that inspired the tunes- “Is this bar open “til tomorrow” and “The Moonshiner”.
As the evening was coming to a close that energy was ramping up to be quite the party. During his last two songs, “Paint the Town red”, and “Drunken lazy Bastard”, people jumped up and filled the dance floor with all their sloppy moves, people were yelling and having fun, people were falling all over the stage and into their equipment. In other words, it was a rousing and very successful evening.
Stay tuned for my review on the Mahones new album. In the meantime they are off to Europe for a tour over there for just over a month before they make it back to Canada. If you want to see a show with people falling down, go to their website and see when they are playing near you.
Here are the Mahones at Lola:
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